President-elect Trump said Tuesday that social media giant Meta has made progress as a company since announcing it was eliminating its fact-checking program.
“Honestly, I think they've come a long way. Both Meta and Facebook, I think they've come a long way,” he said, adding that he and Meta's head of policy, Joel Kaplan, He added that he watched the Fox interview. “Impressive.”
Trump then responded to a question about whether the move was a direct response to threats made by CEO Mark Zuckerberg against him by the president-elect, saying “probably.”
Meta announced a series of changes to its content moderation policy, which Zuckerberg said are an effort to embrace free speech.
The changes, made weeks before President Trump's inauguration, are a big move for Instagram and Facebook's parent company. In his announcement, Zuckerberg cited the recent election as a driving force behind the company's decision and accused “the government and traditional media” of forcing the company to “further increase its censorship.”
This change will be implemented on both Facebook and Instagram along with Threads. Meta's long-standing fact-checking program relied on third-party fact-checkers to moderate posts in more than 60 languages, but the company says its practices eventually became too restrictive.
Elon Musk, a tech billionaire close to President Trump, introduced a system that relied on community notes when he acquired Company X, then known as Twitter, in 2021.
Meta also announced this week that Dana White, CEO and president of Ultimate Fighting Championship, another Trump supporter, will be joining the company's board of directors.
